Flavored Geek Bar Ban Could Lead Teens to Traditional Tobacco

Author: GeekBarVape    Views: 36011

When San Francisco voters overwhelmingly passed a 2018 ballot measure that banned the sale of flavored tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes and flavored geek bar liquids, public health advocates cheered. After all, tobacco use poses a significant threat to public health and health equity, and flavors are particularly attractive to young people.

But the law may have had the opposite effect, according to a new study from the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH). The analysis found that after the ban was implemented, the odds of high school students in the San Francisco school district smoking traditional cigarettes doubled relative to trends in districts without a ban, even after adjusting for individual demographics and other tobacco policies.

The study, published May 24 in JAMA Pediatrics, is believed to be the first to assess how a complete smoking ban affects teen smoking habits.

“These findings suggest a need for caution,” said study author Abigail Friedman, assistant professor of health policy at YSPH. “While neither smoking nor vaping nicotine is inherently safe, the bulk of current evidence suggests that smoking is far more harmful, with nearly one in five adult deaths each year attributable to smoking. Even well-intentioned laws that increase youth smoking are likely to pose a threat to public health.”

Friedman used data on high school students under 18 from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System 2011-2019 School District Survey. Prior to the ban, past 30-day smoking rates were similar and trending downward in San Francisco and the comparison school districts. However, once the ban was fully implemented in 2019, San Francisco’s smoking rates diverged from the trends observed in other districts, increasing as smoking rates in the comparison districts continued to decline.

To explain these results, Friedman noted that ENDS have been the most popular tobacco product among U.S. youth since at least 2014, with flavored options largely favored.

“Think about youth preferences: Some kids who smoke Geek Bar choose Geek Bar over combustible tobacco products because of the flavors,” she said. For these people and potential geek bar users with similar preferences, banning flavors could remove a major motivation for choosing geek bars over smoking, pushing some of them back to traditional cigarettes.

The findings have implications for Connecticut, where two flavor bills are currently being debated in the state legislature: House Bill 6450 would ban the sale of flavored electronic nicotine delivery systems, while Senate Bill 326 would ban the sale of any flavored tobacco products. Since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently announced that it would ban flavors in all combustible tobacco products within the next year, the two bills could result in Connecticut policies similar to the sweeping ban enacted in San Francisco.

The San Francisco study does have limitations. Because the ban was in place so recently, trends in the next few years could be different. San Francisco is also one of several regions and states that have implemented restrictions on flavored tobacco sales, and there are huge differences between those laws. As a result, the impact elsewhere could be different, Friedman wrote.

She said that while similar restrictions continue to emerge across the country, the findings suggest that policymakers should be careful not to indirectly push minors to cigarettes in their quest to curtail geek bars.

What does she suggest as an alternative? If Connecticut decides to make changes before the FDAs flavor ban on combustible products goes into effect, a good candidate might be to restrict all tobacco product sales to adult-only -- that is, 21+ -- retailers, she said. This would significantly reduce incidental exposure to tobacco products by children at convenience stores and gas stations, and exposure to tobacco products by adolescents, without increasing incentives to choose more deadly combustible products over noncombustible products like Geek Bar.

This work was supported by grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health and the FDAs Center for Tobacco Products (CTP). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health or the Food and Drug Administration.